Thinking a lot at the moment about the balance between principles & pragmatism and between making good arguments & negotiating.
-
-
If everyone could be convinced by good arguments for good principles, that would be great. But there's psychology & belief & perspectives.
-
And so then there's a need to decide what your essential goals are and what will best achieve them.
-
But a sole focus on that leads to the abandonment of principles & then there's no possibility of ethically worthwhile outcomes.
-
So needs to be a balance in which you have strong principles & good arguments for them but don't always need everyone to be fully on board
-
every step of the way. Providing you share the key principles. Being OK with ppl coming at the same thing from a different angle can be hard
-
For me, anyway. I always want to explain to people in great detail exactly why they are wrong about something until they get it.
-
But this is the fatal flaw of the ideologue who demands purity & will sabotage their own goals in demanding it.
-
It should be enough to say 'I disagree with you on that but let's focus on the problem we both see' in very many cases.
-
I once found common ground with an Islamic feminist because we both wanted legal gender equality but had different justifications for this.
-
Not that different tho. She said 'Allah is just. Gender inequality is unjust. Therefore it is against the will of God.'
-
Once you took the will of God out of the equation, our conception of gender equality & justice was the same.
-
Therefore, it was probably best not to get bogged down in an argument about whether God a) exists and b) is a fan of gender equality.
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
I like think that the *definition* of a good principle is that it has useful, pragmatic outcomes for society as a whole.
-
By 'principle' I mean things like, say, gender equality. By 'pragmatic' I mean the things done in service of this.
-
I agree, assuming you are using pragmatic as an adjective to describe actions that support or establish a principle.
-
I also think principles themselves can be pragmatic (or not). A principle that everyone must earn the same hourly wage, for example, is not.
-
That's not what I mean by a principle. The principle would be something to do with fairness or being able to live. The plan wld be pragmatic
-
I see a principle as a "foundational belief". Almost any belief can be a principle, if you are willing to accept it as such.
-
Sure but can a plan be? I don't really want to debate definitions but usually when talking principles vs pragmatics, the latter is the doing
-
This is the ethic we want to work by & these are the practicalities of how it will work. That is what I meant anyway.
- 2 more replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.